Mandalore – a land of struggles

Today we are going to talk about Mandalore.
The first character we saw in a Mandalorian armor was the bounty hunter Boba Fett in the Original Trilogy.
Then we met Jango Fett in ‘Episode II: Attacks of the Clones‘ Boba’s father and it was reveal that Boba was a clone. Though we never found out if Jango Fett was a real mandalorian or just stole a mandalorian armor as Prime Minister Almec suggested:

While the movies didn’t have the time to develop on Mandalore, Star Wars The Clone Wars revealed us the story of Mandalore and the Mandalorians with the episodes 02×12 The Mandalore Plot, 02×13 Voyage of Temptation, 02×14 Duchess of Mandalore, 03×05 Corruption, 03×06 The Academy, 04×14 A Friend In Need, 05×14 Eminence, 05×15 Shades of Reason, 05×16 The Lawless.
That’s what Mandalore looks like, a desolated land (ravaged by old wars of the Mandalorians) with cities inside some big spheres:
The Capital of Mandalore is Sundari. The specificity of the architecture is the cubism – the trees, the buildings, the furniture, everything follows this pattern on this planet :
The Mandalorians also have particular faces, the faces are more square curves as we can see on the picture:
The Mandalorians also have their own language, it was heard in the episode 12 of season 2 ‘Mandalore Plot’, it was spoken by one of the Death Watch terrorist :

As mentioned earlier, Mandalore has been the land of war. The past of the Mandalorians is a warrior past made of tribes fighting the jedi. There is a ruin of this past, a painting representing these wars is at the entrance of the Mandalorian Palace. This painting is inspired by real-life paintings of Pablo Picasso :
Wars have ravaged Mandalore for a long time. When Obi-Wan was a padawan, he was sent with his master Qui-Gon Jinn to protect Duchess Satine Kryze who had other ideas for Mandalore. That’s where Obi-Wan and Satine fell in love. Satine succeeded what she wanted to do. She created a New Mandalore – a pacifist people.

Duchess Satine Kryze – leader of Mandalore
She is the leader of Mandalore and is a pacifist. She lead her people to a new era and saved Mandalore. When The Clone Wars started she decided to put Mandalore on the neutral side that’s where she also became the representative of the neutral systems which put her system in troubles for getting supplies since she wasn’t part of the Republic that’s where Padmé Amidala tried to help her. Even though some members of her administration got corrupted in order to get supplies via black market, Satine always stayed true to her intentions, she faced corruption and terrorism and got out of these struggles stronger. Her character is the perfect example of a strong female character in Star Wars. We know two members of her family – Korkie (her nephew) a student of the Royal Academy of Mandalore and Bo-Katan (her sister) member of the terrorist group the Death Watch (we will talk about them later). Satine died when Darth Maul took control of Mandalore and killed her to get his revenge on Obi-Wan. Her death was without any doubt the most dramatic death on the show :

There are only two armed forces on Mandalore – the Mandalorian police.
And the personal guards of Satine.
These guards were formed at the Royal Academy:
In the episode 6 of season 3 ‘The Academy’ we follow the story of Korkie Kryze, Soniee, Lagos, Amis – four cadets who are being trained at the Royal Academy.
These cadets discovered a plot lead by the Prime Minister Almec who was using the Black Market to get supplies for the people of Mandalore and who wanted to take control of the planet. Almec was arrested and his plot stopped but he later came back to power when Maul took control of Mandalore and put him back to his post of Prime Minister.

Death Watch
However, not every Mandalorians agreed with Satine’s government, a small group of Mandalorians terrorists disagreed with her, they were called the Death Watch. The Death Watch was first lead by Pre Vizsla who tried to work with the Separatists to stop Satine and her government but they failed and the Death Watch had to leave Concordia, the forest moon of Mandalore. These terrorists later met Darth Maul who helped them to build an army – the Shadow Collective – and take control of Mandalore. It was when they took control of Mandalore that after a duel Darth Maul executed Pre Vizsla and took control of the Death Watch and Mandalore. Bo-Katan, leader of the Night-Owls a section of Death Watch troopers, made sedition and formed a new group of resistance against the new power of Mandalore lead by Darth Maul. The Mandalorians lead by Maul were red whereas Bo-Katan’s Mandalorians were blue and grey.

Resistance
Bo-Katan in her resistance against Maul’s Mandalore gathered some members of the pacifist Mandalore including Korkie, Soniee, Lagos, Amis and Satine even though Satine was quickly re-captured and executed. The resistance lead the battle against Maul’s Mandalore but they eventually lost the battle as Maul Mandalorians were still in power during the events of Darth Maul Son of Dathomir but the Mandalorian Resistance was mentioned for giving information to the Republic. What Satine had built for years was destroyed but hope still remained for Mandalore with this resistance.

The fate of Mandalore remains unknown but it would have been given in an unreleased arc of season 7 where Ahsoka would have been working with Bo-Katan.